Birthday Number 1s: 2013 - Wake Me Up

In August 2013, it was

Wake Me Up - Avicii

with vocals by Aloe Blacc.

This was a massive hit, one of the biggest dance songs of that decade, but it wasn't the only massive hit of 2013. I have, thankfully, narrowly avoided having to write about the execrable Blurred Lines (Number 1 in July 2013), which almost, literally, ruined all music for everyone.

Also, there's Thrift Shop, Love Me Again, I Love It, Roar, Counting Stars, Wrecking Ball, and a little number you might have heard of called Get Lucky.

But Wake Me Up is right up there. Aloe Blacc is a fine, retro soul singer who had big hits with I Need a Dollar and The Man. He wrote the lyrics to this song. They are sweet, open-hearted lyrics. This song really works, I think, The melody and the sentiment feel genuinely fresh and soulful, and the different elements don't jar. It could have been a cheesy disaster, but it isn't. There are a lot of non-EDM covers of it, and it was something of a fixture on the talent shows.

I didn't know all that much about Avicii, just that he was one of the foremost names in EDM, that he was a superstar DJ. I remember hearing that he was retiring, which seemed sad, and was shocked by his suicide in Oman, aged 28, in 2018.

When I read about him (real name Tim Bergling) I noticed that the tributes described him as a musical prodigy, a gentle, highly sensitive person who struggled with fame, with life in general, hated letting people down, was obsessed with making beautiful music, and it struck me that he was being described in terms which, rightly or wrongly, I was conditioned not to associate with dance music, but with the doomed singer-songwriter (Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain), with folk and rock'n'roll. Dance music was the music of emptiness, of hedonism, wasn't it? The superstars were opportunistic and brash, weren't they? Avicii seemed to fly in the face of that.

I don't know that there's no truth in my stereotypes, but I think it's helpful for someone like me to hear the beauty and craftsmanship in genres where I don't go looking for them. 

Wake Me Up is, for a globe-smashing banger, a record with some craftsmanship and beauty to it.

As for me, I had a nice summer 2013, I think. 35. I recovered from truly horrendous gastroenteritis, went to France, went to Edinburgh, did a bit of this, a bit of that. Ian Bell scored 3 centuries in the Ashes. Went to Knole Park a lot.

I suppose that year might be looked at, globally, as the calm before the storm. Was probably stormy enough, mind.